If it's outdated now, it's because it opened a new era, 16 Sep 2008
'Ways of Seeing' is a book which some readers may find a bit puzzling. The ads reproduced in its pages look naive to us, in their unsophisticated emphasis on luxury and glamour, and Berger's commentary on advertising may seem a bit simple, but if so it's because he was one of the first and best critics to compare the effects and uses of advertising and fine art. The main difference between him and most contemporary commentators is that Berger had an independent perspective that they lack; his analysis has far more steel and indignation than the work of someone like Peter York, who comments on ads from the insider's perspective of "Is it effective or not?" Berger refuses to be seduced into talking about ads on their own terms. While the specific tactics used in advertising may be different now from what they were when this book was originally published, the basic strategy is still the same as it will ever be: to sell us not a product but a lifestyle.

Anyone who has travelled in a less-well-off country that has a functioning advertising industry (Greece, for instance) will have noticed that billboard ads there tend to be like early 70s ads in richer countries: they promote a dream of luxury, wealth and sophistication. Ads in the UK and Ireland are aimed at people who already think of themselves as reasonably wealthy and sophisticated, and so UK and Irish ads tend to promote an idea of the consumer as being rootsy, down-to-earth, unpretentious, sensible - all the things that we secretly fear we aren't. The tactic is different, but the strategy (to play on the consumer's hopes and fears about what kind of person they are) is the same.

Berger's work is hardly full of undigested chunks of Marxist doctrine, unlike the far more impenetrable and far less useful work of (e.g.) the Art & Language group. If you come across his work when you're young or ignorant enough, he is one of the most liberating writers around. He teaches you not to agree with him, but how to be critical in the first place; he provokes you into wondering if and how he could be right, which is a gift from a writer to a reader.

This is a relatively entry-level Berger. The early novels are not really very good, except for the first one, "A Painter of our Time". The Booker-winning "G" is a masterpiece, and the more recent fiction has been equally excellent but different in tone and method. The book-length non-fiction, such as "A Fortunate Man", "A Seventh Man", "Another Way of Telling", is all superb. He is one of the best English writers and as he passes 80, his work shows no sign of declining in quality or intensity.

It should be stated that this is only the accompanying book of a TV series which, shamefully, isn't available on DVD. "Ways of Seeing" the programme is still pretty mind-blowing, right from the cheeky opening sequence where Berger appears to cut up an actual Botticelli. The whole show is, or used to be, available in bits on YouTube. I would rather sit through a TV show by Berger than the whole of Kenneth Clark's contemporary and far more expensive "Civilisation", which has been released on DVD.

Thought provoking..., 20 Feb 2008
I recently had to read this as the basis for an essay, but was pleasantly surprised. It is an interesting snippet questioning our view of art and if it has changed throughout history. I found a few of the assumptions a little irritating, such as that Reubens would not have been aware of the device of depicting the human body in an anatomically incorrect pose in order to give the impression of movement. (Particularly as this is something that was well known among artists for hundreds of years and had been used by Leonardo da Vinci for example).

However, if you are looking for a thought provoking, unusual look at how images have been used throughout history, give it a go. Its not a long book and some of the chapters are purely visual to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions.

Essential reading for any kind of visual artist, 10 Feb 2008
This compact, easy to read pictoral/text book is a great aid to understanding the semantics of visual conception. You may think some of it obvious, and some of it a bit cooky, for example its marxist angles on the reasons why we see things the way we have come to, but it does get the student of all things visual thinking hard about it all. Whilst not being a specific aid to any particular field, it is an essential general reader for anyone studying the visual arts, from graphic design to theatre design, and from architecture to photography, and it's why it is still a standard first year college issue on so many courses.

Confounding seeing with perception., 27 Sep 2007
Berger's book is a typical leftist product of the period. He is so desperate to bring class war into the topic that he comes across as faintly absurd. For example - and there are many such - he talks of "..the esoteric approach of a few specialised experts who are the clerks of the nostalgia of a ruling class in decline." when criticising other art critics. I often found myself laughing aloud at such pompous absurdities.

When it comes to his "seeing comes before words" he shows he does not understand the difference between 'seeing' and 'perception' which he muddles turn and turn about. He suggests we drop our assumptions of form, status, taste when viewing an artwork as these are 'mystifications' and we should instead 'see' the art in unencumbered form, as it were. He proceeds to suggest we 'Study this evidence and judge for yourself'. But how could we apply thought to our 'seeing' and avoid it becoming a perception? For that is what he is asking us to do. How could we differentiate what we see without perception? All he does is to introduce his own view of how we should look at art and claim it is better than a different (capitalist?) way.

His views on the representation of women will fascinate archeologists of sociology. He appears oblivious of the fact that women have always been able to view images of men sexually.

Some sound ideas, but out-of-date and prejudiced, 23 Sep 2007
A short beginner's guide to the philosophy of art, John Berger's 1972 book "Ways Of Seeing" is often talked about as being a seminal piece of critical writing about art, but it lacks the relevance and profundity that it may have been credited with on its first publication 35 years ago.

The principles that Berger details about the viewer and the subject in imagery are simple but sound. All too often Berger is either stating the obvious or making rather questionable generalisations (for example "All publicity works on anxiety. The sum of everything is money, to get money is to overcome anxiety.")

It is, though other reviewers disagree, definitely dated. Image production and manipulation has developed too far, and become too international, in the last 35 years for "Ways Of Seeing" to even hope to be relevant. It is inherently bigoted, fixated by the English upper classes, and also for example gives some importance to the 'recent' arrival of colour photography as being an important influence on advertising.

Berger seems to particularly enjoy writing chapter 3 (one of the longest chapters), about nude women, which makes very few points about the form and seems like a cheap excuse to reproduce various images of undressed ladies...

A big drawback is that the typography of this book is awful. Considering that its subject matter is that of images, I am staggered that whoever arranged it decided it would be a good idea to put the entire text in BOLD type with expanded line spacing, which leaves limited room for the reproductions of the images, many of which are reproduced far too small and with poor print quality so that you can't make out the details that Berger is actually referring to.

If it's outdated now, it's because it opened a new era, 16 Sep 2008
'Ways of Seeing' is a book which some readers may find a bit puzzling. The ads reproduced in its pages look naive to us, in their unsophisticated emphasis on luxury and glamour, and Berger's commentary on advertising may seem a bit simple, but if so it's because he was one of the first and best critics to compare the effects and uses of advertising and fine art. The main difference between him and most contemporary commentators is that Berger had an independent perspective that they lack; his analysis has far more steel and indignation than the work of someone like Peter York, who comments on ads from the insider's perspective of "Is it effective or not?" Berger refuses to be seduced into talking about ads on their own terms. While the specific tactics used in advertising may be different now from what they were when this book was originally published, the basic strategy is still the same as it will ever be: to sell us not a product but a lifestyle.

Anyone who has travelled in a less-well-off country that has a functioning advertising industry (Greece, for instance) will have noticed that billboard ads there tend to be like early 70s ads in richer countries: they promote a dream of luxury, wealth and sophistication. Ads in the UK and Ireland are aimed at people who already think of themselves as reasonably wealthy and sophisticated, and so UK and Irish ads tend to promote an idea of the consumer as being rootsy, down-to-earth, unpretentious, sensible - all the things that we secretly fear we aren't. The tactic is different, but the strategy (to play on the consumer's hopes and fears about what kind of person they are) is the same.

Berger's work is hardly full of undigested chunks of Marxist doctrine, unlike the far more impenetrable and far less useful work of (e.g.) the Art & Language group. If you come across his work when you're young or ignorant enough, he is one of the most liberating writers around. He teaches you not to agree with him, but how to be critical in the first place; he provokes you into wondering if and how he could be right, which is a gift from a writer to a reader.

This is a relatively entry-level Berger. The early novels are not really very good, except for the first one, "A Painter of our Time". The Booker-winning "G" is a masterpiece, and the more recent fiction has been equally excellent but different in tone and method. The book-length non-fiction, such as "A Fortunate Man", "A Seventh Man", "Another Way of Telling", is all superb. He is one of the best English writers and as he passes 80, his work shows no sign of declining in quality or intensity.

It should be stated that this is only the accompanying book of a TV series which, shamefully, isn't available on DVD. "Ways of Seeing" the programme is still pretty mind-blowing, right from the cheeky opening sequence where Berger appears to cut up an actual Botticelli. The whole show is, or used to be, available in bits on YouTube. I would rather sit through a TV show by Berger than the whole of Kenneth Clark's contemporary and far more expensive "Civilisation", which has been released on DVD.

Thought provoking..., 20 Feb 2008
I recently had to read this as the basis for an essay, but was pleasantly surprised. It is an interesting snippet questioning our view of art and if it has changed throughout history. I found a few of the assumptions a little irritating, such as that Reubens would not have been aware of the device of depicting the human body in an anatomically incorrect pose in order to give the impression of movement. (Particularly as this is something that was well known among artists for hundreds of years and had been used by Leonardo da Vinci for example).

However, if you are looking for a thought provoking, unusual look at how images have been used throughout history, give it a go. Its not a long book and some of the chapters are purely visual to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions.

Essential reading for any kind of visual artist, 10 Feb 2008
This compact, easy to read pictoral/text book is a great aid to understanding the semantics of visual conception. You may think some of it obvious, and some of it a bit cooky, for example its marxist angles on the reasons why we see things the way we have come to, but it does get the student of all things visual thinking hard about it all. Whilst not being a specific aid to any particular field, it is an essential general reader for anyone studying the visual arts, from graphic design to theatre design, and from architecture to photography, and it's why it is still a standard first year college issue on so many courses.

Confounding seeing with perception., 27 Sep 2007
Berger's book is a typical leftist product of the period. He is so desperate to bring class war into the topic that he comes across as faintly absurd. For example - and there are many such - he talks of "..the esoteric approach of a few specialised experts who are the clerks of the nostalgia of a ruling class in decline." when criticising other art critics. I often found myself laughing aloud at such pompous absurdities.

When it comes to his "seeing comes before words" he shows he does not understand the difference between 'seeing' and 'perception' which he muddles turn and turn about. He suggests we drop our assumptions of form, status, taste when viewing an artwork as these are 'mystifications' and we should instead 'see' the art in unencumbered form, as it were. He proceeds to suggest we 'Study this evidence and judge for yourself'. But how could we apply thought to our 'seeing' and avoid it becoming a perception? For that is what he is asking us to do. How could we differentiate what we see without perception? All he does is to introduce his own view of how we should look at art and claim it is better than a different (capitalist?) way.

His views on the representation of women will fascinate archeologists of sociology. He appears oblivious of the fact that women have always been able to view images of men sexually.

Some sound ideas, but out-of-date and prejudiced, 23 Sep 2007
A short beginner's guide to the philosophy of art, John Berger's 1972 book "Ways Of Seeing" is often talked about as being a seminal piece of critical writing about art, but it lacks the relevance and profundity that it may have been credited with on its first publication 35 years ago.

The principles that Berger details about the viewer and the subject in imagery are simple but sound. All too often Berger is either stating the obvious or making rather questionable generalisations (for example "All publicity works on anxiety. The sum of everything is money, to get money is to overcome anxiety.")

It is, though other reviewers disagree, definitely dated. Image production and manipulation has developed too far, and become too international, in the last 35 years for "Ways Of Seeing" to even hope to be relevant. It is inherently bigoted, fixated by the English upper classes, and also for example gives some importance to the 'recent' arrival of colour photography as being an important influence on advertising.

Berger seems to particularly enjoy writing chapter 3 (one of the longest chapters), about nude women, which makes very few points about the form and seems like a cheap excuse to reproduce various images of undressed ladies...

A big drawback is that the typography of this book is awful. Considering that its subject matter is that of images, I am staggered that whoever arranged it decided it would be a good idea to put the entire text in BOLD type with expanded line spacing, which leaves limited room for the reproductions of the images, many of which are reproduced far too small and with poor print quality so that you can't make out the details that Berger is actually referring to.

Worth its Weight in Gold!, 31 Mar 2008
This book is filled to the brim with 371, yes 371 individual sources/texts each with an introduction to contextualise each one. Using it for an essay or dissertation will provide you with quotes that you would not be able to find in other books as well as giving you some of the more obvious source which are great too. It is a big book at 1250 pages which was intimating at first when it dropped through the door but really quickly I discovered that its as good as having a whole library in one book which is just about portable.

This is a great book and when you start using it you will realise what a bargain it is too. Worth its weight in gold

BUY IT NOW!, 16 Apr 2006
I reluctantly bought this book believing it would join others on my bookshelf, however it has become my primary source of reference before starting any art essay. How did I manage before? For anyone with an interest in Fine Art this is a must have! I've noticed that it is difficult to obtain this book now -Phew! got my copy just in time. Seek it out and but it now!! This is one you really need!

You need this book., 13 Oct 2005
Absolutely no question.
If you are studying art or intend to then buy this book.
Now.
Don't hesitate.
It has just about all you need.

Essential primer & intro to world of theory..., 25 Jun 2003
Sadly I've only come across this wonderful book (and its earlier companions) recently- a vast collection of key essays and theories relating to culture in the 20th Century. It certainly beats the **** out of a book like Beginning Theory, which is half the price but much, much shorter. A key book that should be owned by all undergraduates starting Uni operating in the wide remit of humanities. The essays/excerpts are short, easy to read & broken down into eight major sections and subsequent sub-sections. Seriously, this book is packed with the kind of thinking and quotations that should litter any university-standard essay- & also gives you a sample of certain writers- which could then be pursued from this wonderful starting point.

The book has sections on: Classicism & Originality; Expression & the Primitive; Modernity; Cubism; Neo-Classicism & the Call to Order; Dissent & Disorder; Abstraction & Form; Utility & Construction; The Modern as Ideal; Realism as Figuration; Realism as Critique; Modernism as Critique; The American Avant-Garde; Individualism in Europe; Art&Society; Art&Modern Life; Modernist Art; Objecthood&Reductivism; Attitudes to Form; Critical Revisions; The Critique of Originality; Figures of Difference;& The Condition of History. Seriously you could easily read the lot in the first year at uni, setting you up greatly for the harder years that follow...Plenty of key cultural thinkers appear here, a brief survey of the contents pages offers Freud, Rilke, Kandinsky, Croce, Lenin, Wyndham Lewis, Braque, Picasso, Spengler, Duchamp, Man Ray, Tatlin, Klee, Jung, Alfred Rosenberg, John Reed, Trotsky, Breton, Bataille, Brecht, Adorno, Pollock, Sartre, Artaud, Lacan, Camus, Bacon, Schlesinger Jr, Lukacs, Barthes, Raymond Williams,Cage, Warhol, Robbe-Grillet, Derrida, Foucault, Mulvey, Jameson, Said, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Wollen, & just about every major theorist of the 20th Century.

This book is excellent value and the ideal primer for anyone studying any subject relating to theory (pretty much most); only quibble would be the relatively fragile cover, which would require a plastic cover or be easily ruined with the amount of reference to this book that would no doubt occur. OWN!

If it's outdated now, it's because it opened a new era, 16 Sep 2008
'Ways of Seeing' is a book which some readers may find a bit puzzling. The ads reproduced in its pages look naive to us, in their unsophisticated emphasis on luxury and glamour, and Berger's commentary on advertising may seem a bit simple, but if so it's because he was one of the first and best critics to compare the effects and uses of advertising and fine art. The main difference between him and most contemporary commentators is that Berger had an independent perspective that they lack; his analysis has far more steel and indignation than the work of someone like Peter York, who comments on ads from the insider's perspective of "Is it effective or not?" Berger refuses to be seduced into talking about ads on their own terms. While the specific tactics used in advertising may be different now from what they were when this book was originally published, the basic strategy is still the same as it will ever be: to sell us not a product but a lifestyle.

Anyone who has travelled in a less-well-off country that has a functioning advertising industry (Greece, for instance) will have noticed that billboard ads there tend to be like early 70s ads in richer countries: they promote a dream of luxury, wealth and sophistication. Ads in the UK and Ireland are aimed at people who already think of themselves as reasonably wealthy and sophisticated, and so UK and Irish ads tend to promote an idea of the consumer as being rootsy, down-to-earth, unpretentious, sensible - all the things that we secretly fear we aren't. The tactic is different, but the strategy (to play on the consumer's hopes and fears about what kind of person they are) is the same.

Berger's work is hardly full of undigested chunks of Marxist doctrine, unlike the far more impenetrable and far less useful work of (e.g.) the Art & Language group. If you come across his work when you're young or ignorant enough, he is one of the most liberating writers around. He teaches you not to agree with him, but how to be critical in the first place; he provokes you into wondering if and how he could be right, which is a gift from a writer to a reader.

This is a relatively entry-level Berger. The early novels are not really very good, except for the first one, "A Painter of our Time". The Booker-winning "G" is a masterpiece, and the more recent fiction has been equally excellent but different in tone and method. The book-length non-fiction, such as "A Fortunate Man", "A Seventh Man", "Another Way of Telling", is all superb. He is one of the best English writers and as he passes 80, his work shows no sign of declining in quality or intensity.

It should be stated that this is only the accompanying book of a TV series which, shamefully, isn't available on DVD. "Ways of Seeing" the programme is still pretty mind-blowing, right from the cheeky opening sequence where Berger appears to cut up an actual Botticelli. The whole show is, or used to be, available in bits on YouTube. I would rather sit through a TV show by Berger than the whole of Kenneth Clark's contemporary and far more expensive "Civilisation", which has been released on DVD.

Thought provoking..., 20 Feb 2008
I recently had to read this as the basis for an essay, but was pleasantly surprised. It is an interesting snippet questioning our view of art and if it has changed throughout history. I found a few of the assumptions a little irritating, such as that Reubens would not have been aware of the device of depicting the human body in an anatomically incorrect pose in order to give the impression of movement. (Particularly as this is something that was well known among artists for hundreds of years and had been used by Leonardo da Vinci for example).

However, if you are looking for a thought provoking, unusual look at how images have been used throughout history, give it a go. Its not a long book and some of the chapters are purely visual to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions.

Essential reading for any kind of visual artist, 10 Feb 2008
This compact, easy to read pictoral/text book is a great aid to understanding the semantics of visual conception. You may think some of it obvious, and some of it a bit cooky, for example its marxist angles on the reasons why we see things the way we have come to, but it does get the student of all things visual thinking hard about it all. Whilst not being a specific aid to any particular field, it is an essential general reader for anyone studying the visual arts, from graphic design to theatre design, and from architecture to photography, and it's why it is still a standard first year college issue on so many courses.

Confounding seeing with perception., 27 Sep 2007
Berger's book is a typical leftist product of the period. He is so desperate to bring class war into the topic that he comes across as faintly absurd. For example - and there are many such - he talks of "..the esoteric approach of a few specialised experts who are the clerks of the nostalgia of a ruling class in decline." when criticising other art critics. I often found myself laughing aloud at such pompous absurdities.

When it comes to his "seeing comes before words" he shows he does not understand the difference between 'seeing' and 'perception' which he muddles turn and turn about. He suggests we drop our assumptions of form, status, taste when viewing an artwork as these are 'mystifications' and we should instead 'see' the art in unencumbered form, as it were. He proceeds to suggest we 'Study this evidence and judge for yourself'. But how could we apply thought to our 'seeing' and avoid it becoming a perception? For that is what he is asking us to do. How could we differentiate what we see without perception? All he does is to introduce his own view of how we should look at art and claim it is better than a different (capitalist?) way.

His views on the representation of women will fascinate archeologists of sociology. He appears oblivious of the fact that women have always been able to view images of men sexually.

Some sound ideas, but out-of-date and prejudiced, 23 Sep 2007
A short beginner's guide to the philosophy of art, John Berger's 1972 book "Ways Of Seeing" is often talked about as being a seminal piece of critical writing about art, but it lacks the relevance and profundity that it may have been credited with on its first publication 35 years ago.

The principles that Berger details about the viewer and the subject in imagery are simple but sound. All too often Berger is either stating the obvious or making rather questionable generalisations (for example "All publicity works on anxiety. The sum of everything is money, to get money is to overcome anxiety.")

It is, though other reviewers disagree, definitely dated. Image production and manipulation has developed too far, and become too international, in the last 35 years for "Ways Of Seeing" to even hope to be relevant. It is inherently bigoted, fixated by the English upper classes, and also for example gives some importance to the 'recent' arrival of colour photography as being an important influence on advertising.

Berger seems to particularly enjoy writing chapter 3 (one of the longest chapters), about nude women, which makes very few points about the form and seems like a cheap excuse to reproduce various images of undressed ladies...

A big drawback is that the typography of this book is awful. Considering that its subject matter is that of images, I am staggered that whoever arranged it decided it would be a good idea to put the entire text in BOLD type with expanded line spacing, which leaves limited room for the reproductions of the images, many of which are reproduced far too small and with poor print quality so that you can't make out the details that Berger is actually referring to.

Worth its Weight in Gold!, 31 Mar 2008
This book is filled to the brim with 371, yes 371 individual sources/texts each with an introduction to contextualise each one. Using it for an essay or dissertation will provide you with quotes that you would not be able to find in other books as well as giving you some of the more obvious source which are great too. It is a big book at 1250 pages which was intimating at first when it dropped through the door but really quickly I discovered that its as good as having a whole library in one book which is just about portable.

This is a great book and when you start using it you will realise what a bargain it is too. Worth its weight in gold

BUY IT NOW!, 16 Apr 2006
I reluctantly bought this book believing it would join others on my bookshelf, however it has become my primary source of reference before starting any art essay. How did I manage before? For anyone with an interest in Fine Art this is a must have! I've noticed that it is difficult to obtain this book now -Phew! got my copy just in time. Seek it out and but it now!! This is one you really need!

You need this book., 13 Oct 2005
Absolutely no question.
If you are studying art or intend to then buy this book.
Now.
Don't hesitate.
It has just about all you need.

Essential primer & intro to world of theory..., 25 Jun 2003
Sadly I've only come across this wonderful book (and its earlier companions) recently- a vast collection of key essays and theories relating to culture in the 20th Century. It certainly beats the **** out of a book like Beginning Theory, which is half the price but much, much shorter. A key book that should be owned by all undergraduates starting Uni operating in the wide remit of humanities. The essays/excerpts are short, easy to read & broken down into eight major sections and subsequent sub-sections. Seriously, this book is packed with the kind of thinking and quotations that should litter any university-standard essay- & also gives you a sample of certain writers- which could then be pursued from this wonderful starting point.

The book has sections on: Classicism & Originality; Expression & the Primitive; Modernity; Cubism; Neo-Classicism & the Call to Order; Dissent & Disorder; Abstraction & Form; Utility & Construction; The Modern as Ideal; Realism as Figuration; Realism as Critique; Modernism as Critique; The American Avant-Garde; Individualism in Europe; Art&Society; Art&Modern Life; Modernist Art; Objecthood&Reductivism; Attitudes to Form; Critical Revisions; The Critique of Originality; Figures of Difference;& The Condition of History. Seriously you could easily read the lot in the first year at uni, setting you up greatly for the harder years that follow...Plenty of key cultural thinkers appear here, a brief survey of the contents pages offers Freud, Rilke, Kandinsky, Croce, Lenin, Wyndham Lewis, Braque, Picasso, Spengler, Duchamp, Man Ray, Tatlin, Klee, Jung, Alfred Rosenberg, John Reed, Trotsky, Breton, Bataille, Brecht, Adorno, Pollock, Sartre, Artaud, Lacan, Camus, Bacon, Schlesinger Jr, Lukacs, Barthes, Raymond Williams,Cage, Warhol, Robbe-Grillet, Derrida, Foucault, Mulvey, Jameson, Said, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Wollen, & just about every major theorist of the 20th Century.

This book is excellent value and the ideal primer for anyone studying any subject relating to theory (pretty much most); only quibble would be the relatively fragile cover, which would require a plastic cover or be easily ruined with the amount of reference to this book that would no doubt occur. OWN!

Do not believe the blurbs, 15 Apr 2008
I keep looking at the cover blurbs, looking at the book, looking back...

Pages 1 to 145 (out of 285, not including the afterword) is a summary of anthropological studies of gift giving in different cultures, and of examples of folk tales which have morals about reciprocity (for example the elves and the shoemaker) and sharing. Message: gift exchange has always been massively important in human culture. So far, almost nothing about the creative spirit and transforming the world.

Pages 146 to 162: 'Commerce and the creative spirit'. OK so now we're getting into it, interesting quotes from Pinter, Roethke, Snyder, Ginsberg. This 16 pages seems to be the start of the main theme, but then...

Pages 163 to 218: A biographical sketch of Whitman, focusing 'on how his nursing during the war opened him to love'.
Pqges 218 to 275: An exposition of Ezra Pound's dingbat economic theories and advocacy of facism and anti-semitism.

The relation of these chapters to the rest of the book seems to rest on the fact that both poets were not mainly attentive to the trappings of worldly success (but neither is Warren Buffet!). There is a strong feeling that he has lectured extensively on both these guys and has basically crowbarred them in. But they make up more than a third of the book.

Last ten pages: kind of a restatement of the introduction, but also a moderation: "I still believe the believe a gift can be destroyed by the marketplace. But I no longer feel the poles of this dichotomy to be so strongly opposed". Now he tells us!

The afterword, written in 2006, is a bunch of disparate stuff: open source, open access journals, Lessig-like copyright issues. all showing gift exchange being alive and well (again, nothing to do with artistic gifts - he bounces between the 2 ideas when convenient).

So why are Geoff Dyer and David Foster Wallace (neither of whom are the types of writer I would associate with this kind of poorly constructed mush) willing to act as salesmen for it? How can canongate say that reading about Pound and facism will 'transform the way you look at the world'?

I keep looking at the cover blurbs, looking at the book, looking back...

Early Xmas present to myself, 15 Dec 2007
I bought this for my art school student brother, but ended up keeping it for myself...It reminds us of the place of non-commercial exchange in our culture. It was originally written in the 70s and it shows: today even art is all about money, which robs it of what makes it precious in the first place. This book is unique and therefore difficult to describe - read for yourselves!

A book that will change the way you see the world, 11 Sep 2007
I picked up a copy of The Gift in a bookstore and was initially sceptical because it had these raving endorsements from what seemed like TOO many authors who I think are brilliant. Can a book be this good? Margaret Atwood, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith and Geoff Dyer all certainly seem to think so. And you know what? They were right.

Lewis Hyde is not only a beautiful prose stylist but he is a thinker to match, for The Gift offers a challenging and provocative argument about how we value things. He uses wide-ranging examples from across cultures and epochs and leaves you at the end valuing all the more those things that can't have a monetary worth attached to them.

This is a massive book teeming with wisdom and insights into what matters. It's essential reading. And a beautiful book to give people for many different reasons.

Makes me want to be a bohemian., 14 Apr 2007
Makes me feel like there really is some point to it all. Life enhancing stuff.

One of the best books - ever!, 11 Dec 2006
Originally published in 1979 as The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property and now published in England for the 1st time is a book which in my view is one of the best books - ever! Why, because it speaks directly to you about what makes us tick as human beings, what we do for love and what for money. By studying gift economies in the Pacific which show that gifts link people and commerce separates them and then taking an amazing jump through numerous cultural, spiritual and commercial universes helps give you a coherent view of the world. It then awakens interest in every area of art and human endeavour with wonderful readable prose. This is truly the book to have on your desert island and to give as a gift to everyone you know. Along with Epictetus's "the Art of Living" its all I need.

If it's outdated now, it's because it opened a new era, 16 Sep 2008
'Ways of Seeing' is a book which some readers may find a bit puzzling. The ads reproduced in its pages look naive to us, in their unsophisticated emphasis on luxury and glamour, and Berger's commentary on advertising may seem a bit simple, but if so it's because he was one of the first and best critics to compare the effects and uses of advertising and fine art. The main difference between him and most contemporary commentators is that Berger had an independent perspective that they lack; his analysis has far more steel and indignation than the work of someone like Peter York, who comments on ads from the insider's perspective of "Is it effective or not?" Berger refuses to be seduced into talking about ads on their own terms. While the specific tactics used in advertising may be different now from what they were when this book was originally published, the basic strategy is still the same as it will ever be: to sell us not a product but a lifestyle.

Anyone who has travelled in a less-well-off country that has a functioning advertising industry (Greece, for instance) will have noticed that billboard ads there tend to be like early 70s ads in richer countries: they promote a dream of luxury, wealth and sophistication. Ads in the UK and Ireland are aimed at people who already think of themselves as reasonably wealthy and sophisticated, and so UK and Irish ads tend to promote an idea of the consumer as being rootsy, down-to-earth, unpretentious, sensible - all the things that we secretly fear we aren't. The tactic is different, but the strategy (to play on the consumer's hopes and fears about what kind of person they are) is the same.

Berger's work is hardly full of undigested chunks of Marxist doctrine, unlike the far more impenetrable and far less useful work of (e.g.) the Art & Language group. If you come across his work when you're young or ignorant enough, he is one of the most liberating writers around. He teaches you not to agree with him, but how to be critical in the first place; he provokes you into wondering if and how he could be right, which is a gift from a writer to a reader.

This is a relatively entry-level Berger. The early novels are not really very good, except for the first one, "A Painter of our Time". The Booker-winning "G" is a masterpiece, and the more recent fiction has been equally excellent but different in tone and method. The book-length non-fiction, such as "A Fortunate Man", "A Seventh Man", "Another Way of Telling", is all superb. He is one of the best English writers and as he passes 80, his work shows no sign of declining in quality or intensity.

It should be stated that this is only the accompanying book of a TV series which, shamefully, isn't available on DVD. "Ways of Seeing" the programme is still pretty mind-blowing, right from the cheeky opening sequence where Berger appears to cut up an actual Botticelli. The whole show is, or used to be, available in bits on YouTube. I would rather sit through a TV show by Berger than the whole of Kenneth Clark's contemporary and far more expensive "Civilisation", which has been released on DVD.

Thought provoking..., 20 Feb 2008
I recently had to read this as the basis for an essay, but was pleasantly surprised. It is an interesting snippet questioning our view of art and if it has changed throughout history. I found a few of the assumptions a little irritating, such as that Reubens would not have been aware of the device of depicting the human body in an anatomically incorrect pose in order to give the impression of movement. (Particularly as this is something that was well known among artists for hundreds of years and had been used by Leonardo da Vinci for example).

However, if you are looking for a thought provoking, unusual look at how images have been used throughout history, give it a go. Its not a long book and some of the chapters are purely visual to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions.

Essential reading for any kind of visual artist, 10 Feb 2008
This compact, easy to read pictoral/text book is a great aid to understanding the semantics of visual conception. You may think some of it obvious, and some of it a bit cooky, for example its marxist angles on the reasons why we see things the way we have come to, but it does get the student of all things visual thinking hard about it all. Whilst not being a specific aid to any particular field, it is an essential general reader for anyone studying the visual arts, from graphic design to theatre design, and from architecture to photography, and it's why it is still a standard first year college issue on so many courses.

Confounding seeing with perception., 27 Sep 2007
Berger's book is a typical leftist product of the period. He is so desperate to bring class war into the topic that he comes across as faintly absurd. For example - and there are many such - he talks of "..the esoteric approach of a few specialised experts who are the clerks of the nostalgia of a ruling class in decline." when criticising other art critics. I often found myself laughing aloud at such pompous absurdities.

When it comes to his "seeing comes before words" he shows he does not understand the difference between 'seeing' and 'perception' which he muddles turn and turn about. He suggests we drop our assumptions of form, status, taste when viewing an artwork as these are 'mystifications' and we should instead 'see' the art in unencumbered form, as it were. He proceeds to suggest we 'Study this evidence and judge for yourself'. But how could we apply thought to our 'seeing' and avoid it becoming a perception? For that is what he is asking us to do. How could we differentiate what we see without perception? All he does is to introduce his own view of how we should look at art and claim it is better than a different (capitalist?) way.

His views on the representation of women will fascinate archeologists of sociology. He appears oblivious of the fact that women have always been able to view images of men sexually.

Some sound ideas, but out-of-date and prejudiced, 23 Sep 2007
A short beginner's guide to the philosophy of art, John Berger's 1972 book "Ways Of Seeing" is often talked about as being a seminal piece of critical writing about art, but it lacks the relevance and profundity that it may have been credited with on its first publication 35 years ago.

The principles that Berger details about the viewer and the subject in imagery are simple but sound. All too often Berger is either stating the obvious or making rather questionable generalisations (for example "All publicity works on anxiety. The sum of everything is money, to get money is to overcome anxiety.")

It is, though other reviewers disagree, definitely dated. Image production and manipulation has developed too far, and become too international, in the last 35 years for "Ways Of Seeing" to even hope to be relevant. It is inherently bigoted, fixated by the English upper classes, and also for example gives some importance to the 'recent' arrival of colour photography as being an important influence on advertising.

Berger seems to particularly enjoy writing chapter 3 (one of the longest chapters), about nude women, which makes very few points about the form and seems like a cheap excuse to reproduce various images of undressed ladies...

A big drawback is that the typography of this book is awful. Considering that its subject matter is that of images, I am staggered that whoever arranged it decided it would be a good idea to put the entire text in BOLD type with expanded line spacing, which leaves limited room for the reproductions of the images, many of which are reproduced far too small and with poor print quality so that you can't make out the details that Berger is actually referring to.

Worth its Weight in Gold!, 31 Mar 2008
This book is filled to the brim with 371, yes 371 individual sources/texts each with an introduction to contextualise each one. Using it for an essay or dissertation will provide you with quotes that you would not be able to find in other books as well as giving you some of the more obvious source which are great too. It is a big book at 1250 pages which was intimating at first when it dropped through the door but really quickly I discovered that its as good as having a whole library in one book which is just about portable.

This is a great book and when you start using it you will realise what a bargain it is too. Worth its weight in gold

BUY IT NOW!, 16 Apr 2006
I reluctantly bought this book believing it would join others on my bookshelf, however it has become my primary source of reference before starting any art essay. How did I manage before? For anyone with an interest in Fine Art this is a must have! I've noticed that it is difficult to obtain this book now -Phew! got my copy just in time. Seek it out and but it now!! This is one you really need!

You need this book., 13 Oct 2005
Absolutely no question.
If you are studying art or intend to then buy this book.
Now.
Don't hesitate.
It has just about all you need.

Essential primer & intro to world of theory..., 25 Jun 2003
Sadly I've only come across this wonderful book (and its earlier companions) recently- a vast collection of key essays and theories relating to culture in the 20th Century. It certainly beats the **** out of a book like Beginning Theory, which is half the price but much, much shorter. A key book that should be owned by all undergraduates starting Uni operating in the wide remit of humanities. The essays/excerpts are short, easy to read & broken down into eight major sections and subsequent sub-sections. Seriously, this book is packed with the kind of thinking and quotations that should litter any university-standard essay- & also gives you a sample of certain writers- which could then be pursued from this wonderful starting point.

The book has sections on: Classicism & Originality; Expression & the Primitive; Modernity; Cubism; Neo-Classicism & the Call to Order; Dissent & Disorder; Abstraction & Form; Utility & Construction; The Modern as Ideal; Realism as Figuration; Realism as Critique; Modernism as Critique; The American Avant-Garde; Individualism in Europe; Art&Society; Art&Modern Life; Modernist Art; Objecthood&Reductivism; Attitudes to Form; Critical Revisions; The Critique of Originality; Figures of Difference;& The Condition of History. Seriously you could easily read the lot in the first year at uni, setting you up greatly for the harder years that follow...Plenty of key cultural thinkers appear here, a brief survey of the contents pages offers Freud, Rilke, Kandinsky, Croce, Lenin, Wyndham Lewis, Braque, Picasso, Spengler, Duchamp, Man Ray, Tatlin, Klee, Jung, Alfred Rosenberg, John Reed, Trotsky, Breton, Bataille, Brecht, Adorno, Pollock, Sartre, Artaud, Lacan, Camus, Bacon, Schlesinger Jr, Lukacs, Barthes, Raymond Williams,Cage, Warhol, Robbe-Grillet, Derrida, Foucault, Mulvey, Jameson, Said, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Wollen, & just about every major theorist of the 20th Century.

This book is excellent value and the ideal primer for anyone studying any subject relating to theory (pretty much most); only quibble would be the relatively fragile cover, which would require a plastic cover or be easily ruined with the amount of reference to this book that would no doubt occur. OWN!

Do not believe the blurbs, 15 Apr 2008
I keep looking at the cover blurbs, looking at the book, looking back...

Pages 1 to 145 (out of 285, not including the afterword) is a summary of anthropological studies of gift giving in different cultures, and of examples of folk tales which have morals about reciprocity (for example the elves and the shoemaker) and sharing. Message: gift exchange has always been massively important in human culture. So far, almost nothing about the creative spirit and transforming the world.

Pages 146 to 162: 'Commerce and the creative spirit'. OK so now we're getting into it, interesting quotes from Pinter, Roethke, Snyder, Ginsberg. This 16 pages seems to be the start of the main theme, but then...

Pages 163 to 218: A biographical sketch of Whitman, focusing 'on how his nursing during the war opened him to love'.
Pqges 218 to 275: An exposition of Ezra Pound's dingbat economic theories and advocacy of facism and anti-semitism.

The relation of these chapters to the rest of the book seems to rest on the fact that both poets were not mainly attentive to the trappings of worldly success (but neither is Warren Buffet!). There is a strong feeling that he has lectured extensively on both these guys and has basically crowbarred them in. But they make up more than a third of the book.

Last ten pages: kind of a restatement of the introduction, but also a moderation: "I still believe the believe a gift can be destroyed by the marketplace. But I no longer feel the poles of this dichotomy to be so strongly opposed". Now he tells us!

The afterword, written in 2006, is a bunch of disparate stuff: open source, open access journals, Lessig-like copyright issues. all showing gift exchange being alive and well (again, nothing to do with artistic gifts - he bounces between the 2 ideas when convenient).

So why are Geoff Dyer and David Foster Wallace (neither of whom are the types of writer I would associate with this kind of poorly constructed mush) willing to act as salesmen for it? How can canongate say that reading about Pound and facism will 'transform the way you look at the world'?

I keep looking at the cover blurbs, looking at the book, looking back...

Early Xmas present to myself, 15 Dec 2007
I bought this for my art school student brother, but ended up keeping it for myself...It reminds us of the place of non-commercial exchange in our culture. It was originally written in the 70s and it shows: today even art is all about money, which robs it of what makes it precious in the first place. This book is unique and therefore difficult to describe - read for yourselves!

A book that will change the way you see the world, 11 Sep 2007
I picked up a copy of The Gift in a bookstore and was initially sceptical because it had these raving endorsements from what seemed like TOO many authors who I think are brilliant. Can a book be this good? Margaret Atwood, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith and Geoff Dyer all certainly seem to think so. And you know what? They were right.

Lewis Hyde is not only a beautiful prose stylist but he is a thinker to match, for The Gift offers a challenging and provocative argument about how we value things. He uses wide-ranging examples from across cultures and epochs and leaves you at the end valuing all the more those things that can't have a monetary worth attached to them.

This is a massive book teeming with wisdom and insights into what matters. It's essential reading. And a beautiful book to give people for many different reasons.

Makes me want to be a bohemian., 14 Apr 2007
Makes me feel like there really is some point to it all. Life enhancing stuff.

One of the best books - ever!, 11 Dec 2006
Originally published in 1979 as The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property and now published in England for the 1st time is a book which in my view is one of the best books - ever! Why, because it speaks directly to you about what makes us tick as human beings, what we do for love and what for money. By studying gift economies in the Pacific which show that gifts link people and commerce separates them and then taking an amazing jump through numerous cultural, spiritual and commercial universes helps give you a coherent view of the world. It then awakens interest in every area of art and human endeavour with wonderful readable prose. This is truly the book to have on your desert island and to give as a gift to everyone you know. Along with Epictetus's "the Art of Living" its all I need.

An ideal approach..., 11 Feb 2005
I used this book as part of a photography module on my degree and found it a very useful and clear cut.

The ideas, advice and conventions in the book will help any photogrophy student as well as many artists on their way to creating well thought out imagery.

Clarkes accessable masterpiece!, 10 May 2000
Graham Clarke has given the kind of theoratical advice which will help any Photography student through the hard times a marvelous read which is easy to follow and explains the codes and conventions in which we are all governed by.. A must for all photographers!

If it's outdated now, it's because it opened a new era, 16 Sep 2008
'Ways of Seeing' is a book which some readers may find a bit puzzling. The ads reproduced in its pages look naive to us, in their unsophisticated emphasis on luxury and glamour, and Berger's commentary on advertising may seem a bit simple, but if so it's because he was one of the first and best critics to compare the effects and uses of advertising and fine art. The main difference between him and most contemporary commentators is that Berger had an independent perspective that they lack; his analysis has far more steel and indignation than the work of someone like Peter York, who comments on ads from the insider's perspective of "Is it effective or not?" Berger refuses to be seduced into talking about ads on their own terms. While the specific tactics used in advertising may be different now from what they were when this book was originally published, the basic strategy is still the same as it will ever be: to sell us not a product but a lifestyle.

Anyone who has travelled in a less-well-off country that has a functioning advertising industry (Greece, for instance) will have noticed that billboard ads there tend to be like early 70s ads in richer countries: they promote a dream of luxury, wealth and sophistication. Ads in the UK and Ireland are aimed at people who already think of themselves as reasonably wealthy and sophisticated, and so UK and Irish ads tend to promote an idea of the consumer as being rootsy, down-to-earth, unpretentious, sensible - all the things that we secretly fear we aren't. The tactic is different, but the strategy (to play on the consumer's hopes and fears about what kind of person they are) is the same.

Berger's work is hardly full of undigested chunks of Marxist doctrine, unlike the far more impenetrable and far less useful work of (e.g.) the Art & Language group. If you come across his work when you're young or ignorant enough, he is one of the most liberating writers around. He teaches you not to agree with him, but how to be critical in the first place; he provokes you into wondering if and how he could be right, which is a gift from a writer to a reader.

This is a relatively entry-level Berger. The early novels are not really very good, except for the first one, "A Painter of our Time". The Booker-winning "G" is a masterpiece, and the more recent fiction has been equally excellent but different in tone and method. The book-length non-fiction, such as "A Fortunate Man", "A Seventh Man", "Another Way of Telling", is all superb. He is one of the best English writers and as he passes 80, his work shows no sign of declining in quality or intensity.

It should be stated that this is only the accompanying book of a TV series which, shamefully, isn't available on DVD. "Ways of Seeing" the programme is still pretty mind-blowing, right from the cheeky opening sequence where Berger appears to cut up an actual Botticelli. The whole show is, or used to be, available in bits on YouTube. I would rather sit through a TV show by Berger than the whole of Kenneth Clark's contemporary and far more expensive "Civilisation", which has been released on DVD.

Thought provoking..., 20 Feb 2008
I recently had to read this as the basis for an essay, but was pleasantly surprised. It is an interesting snippet questioning our view of art and if it has changed throughout history. I found a few of the assumptions a little irritating, such as that Reubens would not have been aware of the device of depicting the human body in an anatomically incorrect pose in order to give the impression of movement. (Particularly as this is something that was well known among artists for hundreds of years and had been used by Leonardo da Vinci for example).

However, if you are looking for a thought provoking, unusual look at how images have been used throughout history, give it a go. Its not a long book and some of the chapters are purely visual to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions.

Essential reading for any kind of visual artist, 10 Feb 2008
This compact, easy to read pictoral/text book is a great aid to understanding the semantics of visual conception. You may think some of it obvious, and some of it a bit cooky, for example its marxist angles on the reasons why we see things the way we have come to, but it does get the student of all things visual thinking hard about it all. Whilst not being a specific aid to any particular field, it is an essential general reader for anyone studying the visual arts, from graphic design to theatre design, and from architecture to photography, and it's why it is still a standard first year college issue on so many courses.

Confounding seeing with perception., 27 Sep 2007
Berger's book is a typical leftist product of the period. He is so desperate to bring class war into the topic that he comes across as faintly absurd. For example - and there are many such - he talks of "..the esoteric approach of a few specialised experts who are the clerks of the nostalgia of a ruling class in decline." when criticising other art critics. I often found myself laughing aloud at such pompous absurdities.

When it comes to his "seeing comes before words" he shows he does not understand the difference between 'seeing' and 'perception' which he muddles turn and turn about. He suggests we drop our assumptions of form, status, taste when viewing an artwork as these are 'mystifications' and we should instead 'see' the art in unencumbered form, as it were. He proceeds to suggest we 'Study this evidence and judge for yourself'. But how could we apply thought to our 'seeing' and avoid it becoming a perception? For that is what he is asking us to do. How could we differentiate what we see without perception? All he does is to introduce his own view of how we should look at art and claim it is better than a different (capitalist?) way.

His views on the representation of women will fascinate archeologists of sociology. He appears oblivious of the fact that women have always been able to view images of men sexually.

Some sound ideas, but out-of-date and prejudiced, 23 Sep 2007
A short beginner's guide to the philosophy of art, John Berger's 1972 book "Ways Of Seeing" is often talked about as being a seminal piece of critical writing about art, but it lacks the relevance and profundity that it may have been credited with on its first publication 35 years ago.

The principles that Berger details about the viewer and the subject in imagery are simple but sound. All too often Berger is either stating the obvious or making rather questionable generalisations (for example "All publicity works on anxiety. The sum of everything is money, to get money is to overcome anxiety.")

It is, though other reviewers disagree, definitely dated. Image production and manipulation has developed too far, and become too international, in the last 35 years for "Ways Of Seeing" to even hope to be relevant. It is inherently bigoted, fixated by the English upper classes, and also for example gives some importance to the 'recent' arrival of colour photography as being an important influence on advertising.

Berger seems to particularly enjoy writing chapter 3 (one of the longest chapters), about nude women, which makes very few points about the form and seems like a cheap excuse to reproduce various images of undressed ladies...

A big drawback is that the typography of this book is awful. Considering that its subject matter is that of images, I am staggered that whoever arranged it decided it would be a good idea to put the entire text in BOLD type with expanded line spacing, which leaves limited room for the reproductions of the images, many of which are reproduced far too small and with poor print quality so that you can't make out the details that Berger is actually referring to.

Worth its Weight in Gold!, 31 Mar 2008
This book is filled to the brim with 371, yes 371 individual sources/texts each with an introduction to contextualise each one. Using it for an essay or dissertation will provide you with quotes that you would not be able to find in other books as well as giving you some of the more obvious source which are great too. It is a big book at 1250 pages which was intimating at first when it dropped through the door but really quickly I discovered that its as good as having a whole library in one book which is just about portable.

This is a great book and when you start using it you will realise what a bargain it is too. Worth its weight in gold

BUY IT NOW!, 16 Apr 2006
I reluctantly bought this book believing it would join others on my bookshelf, however it has become my primary source of reference before starting any art essay. How did I manage before? For anyone with an interest in Fine Art this is a must have! I've noticed that it is difficult to obtain this book now -Phew! got my copy just in time. Seek it out and but it now!! This is one you really need!

You need this book., 13 Oct 2005
Absolutely no question.
If you are studying art or intend to then buy this book.
Now.
Don't hesitate.
It has just about all you need.

Essential primer & intro to world of theory..., 25 Jun 2003
Sadly I've only come across this wonderful book (and its earlier companions) recently- a vast collection of key essays and theories relating to culture in the 20th Century. It certainly beats the **** out of a book like Beginning Theory, which is half the price but much, much shorter. A key book that should be owned by all undergraduates starting Uni operating in the wide remit of humanities. The essays/excerpts are short, easy to read & broken down into eight major sections and subsequent sub-sections. Seriously, this book is packed with the kind of thinking and quotations that should litter any university-standard essay- & also gives you a sample of certain writers- which could then be pursued from this wonderful starting point.

The book has sections on: Classicism & Originality; Expression & the Primitive; Modernity; Cubism; Neo-Classicism & the Call to Order; Dissent & Disorder; Abstraction & Form; Utility & Construction; The Modern as Ideal; Realism as Figuration; Realism as Critique; Modernism as Critique; The American Avant-Garde; Individualism in Europe; Art&Society; Art&Modern Life; Modernist Art; Objecthood&Reductivism; Attitudes to Form; Critical Revisions; The Critique of Originality; Figures of Difference;& The Condition of History. Seriously you could easily read the lot in the first year at uni, setting you up greatly for the harder years that follow...Plenty of key cultural thinkers appear here, a brief survey of the contents pages offers Freud, Rilke, Kandinsky, Croce, Lenin, Wyndham Lewis, Braque, Picasso, Spengler, Duchamp, Man Ray, Tatlin, Klee, Jung, Alfred Rosenberg, John Reed, Trotsky, Breton, Bataille, Brecht, Adorno, Pollock, Sartre, Artaud, Lacan, Camus, Bacon, Schlesinger Jr, Lukacs, Barthes, Raymond Williams,Cage, Warhol, Robbe-Grillet, Derrida, Foucault, Mulvey, Jameson, Said, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Wollen, & just about every major theorist of the 20th Century.

This book is excellent value and the ideal primer for anyone studying any subject relating to theory (pretty much most); only quibble would be the relatively fragile cover, which would require a plastic cover or be easily ruined with the amount of reference to this book that would no doubt occur. OWN!

Do not believe the blurbs, 15 Apr 2008
I keep looking at the cover blurbs, looking at the book, looking back...

Pages 1 to 145 (out of 285, not including the afterword) is a summary of anthropological studies of gift giving in different cultures, and of examples of folk tales which have morals about reciprocity (for example the elves and the shoemaker) and sharing. Message: gift exchange has always been massively important in human culture. So far, almost nothing about the creative spirit and transforming the world.

Pages 146 to 162: 'Commerce and the creative spirit'. OK so now we're getting into it, interesting quotes from Pinter, Roethke, Snyder, Ginsberg. This 16 pages seems to be the start of the main theme, but then...

Pages 163 to 218: A biographical sketch of Whitman, focusing 'on how his nursing during the war opened him to love'.
Pqges 218 to 275: An exposition of Ezra Pound's dingbat economic theories and advocacy of facism and anti-semitism.

The relation of these chapters to the rest of the book seems to rest on the fact that both poets were not mainly attentive to the trappings of worldly success (but neither is Warren Buffet!). There is a strong feeling that he has lectured extensively on both these guys and has basically crowbarred them in. But they make up more than a third of the book.

Last ten pages: kind of a restatement of the introduction, but also a moderation: "I still believe the believe a gift can be destroyed by the marketplace. But I no longer feel the poles of this dichotomy to be so strongly opposed". Now he tells us!

The afterword, written in 2006, is a bunch of disparate stuff: open source, open access journals, Lessig-like copyright issues. all showing gift exchange being alive and well (again, nothing to do with artistic gifts - he bounces between the 2 ideas when convenient).

So why are Geoff Dyer and David Foster Wallace (neither of whom are the types of writer I would associate with this kind of poorly constructed mush) willing to act as salesmen for it? How can canongate say that reading about Pound and facism will 'transform the way you look at the world'?

I keep looking at the cover blurbs, looking at the book, looking back...

Early Xmas present to myself, 15 Dec 2007
I bought this for my art school student brother, but ended up keeping it for myself...It reminds us of the place of non-commercial exchange in our culture. It was originally written in the 70s and it shows: today even art is all about money, which robs it of what makes it precious in the first place. This book is unique and therefore difficult to describe - read for yourselves!

A book that will change the way you see the world, 11 Sep 2007
I picked up a copy of The Gift in a bookstore and was initially sceptical because it had these raving endorsements from what seemed like TOO many authors who I think are brilliant. Can a book be this good? Margaret Atwood, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith and Geoff Dyer all certainly seem to think so. And you know what? They were right.

Lewis Hyde is not only a beautiful prose stylist but he is a thinker to match, for The Gift offers a challenging and provocative argument about how we value things. He uses wide-ranging examples from across cultures and epochs and leaves you at the end valuing all the more those things that can't have a monetary worth attached to them.

This is a massive book teeming with wisdom and insights into what matters. It's essential reading. And a beautiful book to give people for many different reasons.

Makes me want to be a bohemian., 14 Apr 2007
Makes me feel like there really is some point to it all. Life enhancing stuff.

One of the best books - ever!, 11 Dec 2006
Originally published in 1979 as The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property and now published in England for the 1st time is a book which in my view is one of the best books - ever! Why, because it speaks directly to you about what makes us tick as human beings, what we do for love and what for money. By studying gift economies in the Pacific which show that gifts link people and commerce separates them and then taking an amazing jump through numerous cultural, spiritual and commercial universes helps give you a coherent view of the world. It then awakens interest in every area of art and human endeavour with wonderful readable prose. This is truly the book to have on your desert island and to give as a gift to everyone you know. Along with Epictetus's "the Art of Living" its all I need.

An ideal approach..., 11 Feb 2005
I used this book as part of a photography module on my degree and found it a very useful and clear cut.

The ideas, advice and conventions in the book will help any photogrophy student as well as many artists on their way to creating well thought out imagery.

Clarkes accessable masterpiece!, 10 May 2000
Graham Clarke has given the kind of theoratical advice which will help any Photography student through the hard times a marvelous read which is easy to follow and explains the codes and conventions in which we are all governed by.. A must for all photographers!

If it's outdated now, it's because it opened a new era, 16 Sep 2008
'Ways of Seeing' is a book which some readers may find a bit puzzling. The ads reproduced in its pages look naive to us, in their unsophisticated emphasis on luxury and glamour, and Berger's commentary on advertising may seem a bit simple, but if so it's because he was one of the first and best critics to compare the effects and uses of advertising and fine art. The main difference between him and most contemporary commentators is that Berger had an independent perspective that they lack; his analysis has far more steel and indignation than the work of someone like Peter York, who comments on ads from the insider's perspective of "Is it effective or not?" Berger refuses to be seduced into talking about ads on their own terms. While the specific tactics used in advertising may be different now from what they were when this book was originally published, the basic strategy is still the same as it will ever be: to sell us not a product but a lifestyle.

Anyone who has travelled in a less-well-off country that has a functioning advertising industry (Greece, for instance) will have noticed that billboard ads there tend to be like early 70s ads in richer countries: they promote a dream of luxury, wealth and sophistication. Ads in the UK and Ireland are aimed at people who already think of themselves as reasonably wealthy and sophisticated, and so UK and Irish ads tend to promote an idea of the consumer as being rootsy, down-to-earth, unpretentious, sensible - all the things that we secretly fear we aren't. The tactic is different, but the strategy (to play on the consumer's hopes and fears about what kind of person they are) is the same.

Berger's work is hardly full of undigested chunks of Marxist doctrine, unlike the far more impenetrable and far less useful work of (e.g.) the Art & Language group. If you come across his work when you're young or ignorant enough, he is one of the most liberating writers around. He teaches you not to agree with him, but how to be critical in the first place; he provokes you into wondering if and how he could be right, which is a gift from a writer to a reader.

This is a relatively entry-level Berger. The early novels are not really very good, except for the first one, "A Painter of our Time". The Booker-winning "G" is a masterpiece, and the more recent fiction has been equally excellent but different in tone and method. The book-length non-fiction, such as "A Fortunate Man", "A Seventh Man", "Another Way of Telling", is all superb. He is one of the best English writers and as he passes 80, his work shows no sign of declining in quality or intensity.

It should be stated that this is only the accompanying book of a TV series which, shamefully, isn't available on DVD. "Ways of Seeing" the programme is still pretty mind-blowing, right from the cheeky opening sequence where Berger appears to cut up an actual Botticelli. The whole show is, or used to be, available in bits on YouTube. I would rather sit through a TV show by Berger than the whole of Kenneth Clark's contemporary and far more expensive "Civilisation", which has been released on DVD.

Thought provoking..., 20 Feb 2008
I recently had to read this as the basis for an essay, but was pleasantly surprised. It is an interesting snippet questioning our view of art and if it has changed throughout history. I found a few of the assumptions a little irritating, such as that Reubens would not have been aware of the device of depicting the human body in an anatomically incorrect pose in order to give the impression of movement. (Particularly as this is something that was well known among artists for hundreds of years and had been used by Leonardo da Vinci for example).

However, if you are looking for a thought provoking, unusual look at how images have been used throughout history, give it a go. Its not a long book and some of the chapters are purely visual to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions.

Essential reading for any kind of visual artist, 10 Feb 2008
This compact, easy to read pictoral/text book is a great aid to understanding the semantics of visual conception. You may think some of it obvious, and some of it a bit cooky, for example its marxist angles on the reasons why we see things the way we have come to, but it does get the student of all things visual thinking hard about it all. Whilst not being a specific aid to any particular field, it is an essential general reader for anyone studying the visual arts, from graphic design to theatre design, and from architecture to photography, and it's why it is still a standard first year college issue on so many courses.

Confounding seeing with perception., 27 Sep 2007
Berger's book is a typical leftist product of the period. He is so desperate to bring class war into the topic that he comes across as faintly absurd. For example - and there are many such - he talks of "..the esoteric approach of a few specialised experts who are the clerks of the nostalgia of a ruling class in decline." when criticising other art critics. I often found myself laughing aloud at such pompous absurdities.

When it comes to his "seeing comes before words" he shows he does not understand the difference between 'seeing' and 'perception' which he muddles turn and turn about. He suggests we drop our assumptions of form, status, taste when viewing an artwork as these are 'mystifications' and we should instead 'see' the art in unencumbered form, as it were. He proceeds to suggest we 'Study this evidence and judge for yourself'. But how could we apply thought to our 'seeing' and avoid it becoming a perception? For that is what he is asking us to do. How could we differentiate what we see without perception? All he does is to introduce his own view of how we should look at art and claim it is better than a different (capitalist?) way.

His views on the representation of women will fascinate archeologists of sociology. He appears oblivious of the fact that women have always been able to view images of men sexually.

Some sound ideas, but out-of-date and prejudiced, 23 Sep 2007
A short beginner's guide to the philosophy of art, John Berger's 1972 book "Ways Of Seeing" is often talked about as being a seminal piece of critical writing about art, but it lacks the relevance and profundity that it may have been credited with on its first publication 35 years ago.

The principles that Berger details about the viewer and the subject in imagery are simple but sound. All too often Berger is either stating the obvious or making rather questionable generalisations (for example "All publicity works on anxiety. The sum of everything is money, to get money is to overcome anxiety.")

It is, though other reviewers disagree, definitely dated. Image production and manipulation has developed too far, and become too international, in the last 35 years for "Ways Of Seeing" to even hope to be relevant. It is inherently bigoted, fixated by the English upper classes, and also for example gives some importance to the 'recent' arrival of colour photography as being an important influence on advertising.

Berger seems to particularly enjoy writing chapter 3 (one of the longest chapters), about nude women, which makes very few points about the form and seems like a cheap excuse to reproduce various images of undressed ladies...

A big drawback is that the typography of this book is awful. Considering that its subject matter is that of images, I am staggered that whoever arranged it decided it would be a good idea to put the entire text in BOLD type with expanded line spacing, which leaves limited room for the reproductions of the images, many of which are reproduced far too small and with poor print quality so that you can't make out the details that Berger is actually referring to.

If it's outdated now, it's because it opened a new era, 16 Sep 2008
'Ways of Seeing' is a book which some readers may find a bit puzzling. The ads reproduced in its pages look naive to us, in their unsophisticated emphasis on luxury and glamour, and Berger's commentary on advertising may seem a bit simple, but if so it's because he was one of the first and best critics to compare the effects and uses of advertising and fine art. The main difference between him and most contemporary commentators is that Berger had an independent perspective that they lack; his analysis has far more steel and indignation than the work of someone like Peter York, who comments on ads from the insider's perspective of "Is it effective or not?" Berger refuses to be seduced into talking about ads on their own terms. While the specific tactics used in advertising may be different now from what they were when this book was originally published, the basic strategy is still the same as it will ever be: to sell us not a product but a lifestyle.

Anyone who has travelled in a less-well-off country that has a functioning advertising industry (Greece, for instance) will have noticed that billboard ads there tend to be like early 70s ads in richer countries: they promote a dream of luxury, wealth and sophistication. Ads in the UK and Ireland are aimed at people who already think of themselves as reasonably wealthy and sophisticated, and so UK and Irish ads tend to promote an idea of the consumer as being rootsy, down-to-earth, unpretentious, sensible - all the things that we secretly fear we aren't. The tactic is different, but the strategy (to play on the consumer's hopes and fears about what kind of person they are) is the same.

Berger's work is hardly full of undigested chunks of Marxist doctrine, unlike the far more impenetrable and far less useful work of (e.g.) the Art & Language group. If you come across his work when you're young or ignorant enough, he is one of the most liberating writers around. He teaches you not to agree with him, but how to be critical in the first place; he provokes you into wondering if and how he could be right, which is a gift from a writer to a reader.

This is a relatively entry-level Berger. The early novels are not really very good, except for the first one, "A Painter of our Time". The Booker-winning "G" is a masterpiece, and the more recent fiction has been equally excellent but different in tone and method. The book-length non-fiction, such as "A Fortunate Man", "A Seventh Man", "Another Way of Telling", is all superb. He is one of the best English writers and as he passes 80, his work shows no sign of declining in quality or intensity.

It should be stated that this is only the accompanying book of a TV series which, shamefully, isn't available on DVD. "Ways of Seeing" the programme is still pretty mind-blowing, right from the cheeky opening sequence where Berger appears to cut up an actual Botticelli. The whole show is, or used to be, available in bits on YouTube. I would rather sit through a TV show by Berger than the whole of Kenneth Clark's contemporary and far more expensive "Civilisation", which has been released on DVD.

Thought provoking..., 20 Feb 2008
I recently had to read this as the basis for an essay, but was pleasantly surprised. It is an interesting snippet questioning our view of art and if it has changed throughout history. I found a few of the assumptions a little irritating, such as that Reubens would not have been aware of the device of depicting the human body in an anatomically incorrect pose in order to give the impression of movement. (Particularly as this is something that was well known among artists for hundreds of years and had been used by Leonardo da Vinci for example).

However, if you are looking for a thought provoking, unusual look at how images have been used throughout history, give it a go. Its not a long book and some of the chapters are purely visual to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions.

Essential reading for any kind of visual artist, 10 Feb 2008
This compact, easy to read pictoral/text book is a great aid to understanding the semantics of visual conception. You may think some of it obvious, and some of it a bit cooky, for example its marxist angles on the reasons why we see things the way we have come to, but it does get the student of all things visual thinking hard about it all. Whilst not being a specific aid to any particular field, it is an essential general reader for anyone studying the visual arts, from graphic design to theatre design, and from architecture to photography, and it's why it is still a standard first year college issue on so many courses.

Confounding seeing with perception., 27 Sep 2007
Berger's book is a typical leftist product of the period. He is so desperate to bring class war into the topic that he comes across as faintly absurd. For example - and there are many such - he talks of "..the esoteric approach of a few specialised experts who are the clerks of the nostalgia of a ruling class in decline." when criticising other art critics. I often found myself laughing aloud at such pompous absurdities.

When it comes to his "seeing comes before words" he shows he does not understand the difference between 'seeing' and 'perception' which he muddles turn and turn about. He suggests we drop our assumptions of form, status, taste when viewing an artwork as these are 'mystifications' and we should instead 'see' the art in unencumbered form, as it were. He proceeds to suggest we 'Study this evidence and judge for yourself'. But how could we apply thought to our 'seeing' and avoid it becoming a perception? For that is what he is asking us to do. How could we differentiate what we see without perception? All he does is to introduce his own view of how we should look at art and claim it is better than a different (capitalist?) way.

His views on the representation of women will fascinate archeologists of sociology. He appears oblivious of the fact that women have always been able to view images of men sexually.

Some sound ideas, but out-of-date and prejudiced, 23 Sep 2007
A short beginner's guide to the philosophy of art, John Berger's 1972 book "Ways Of Seeing" is often talked about as being a seminal piece of critical writing about art, but it lacks the relevance and profundity that it may have been credited with on its first publication 35 years ago.

The principles that Berger details about the viewer and the subject in imagery are simple but sound. All too often Berger is either stating the obvious or making rather questionable generalisations (for example "All publicity works on anxiety. The sum of everything is money, to get money is to overcome anxiety.")

It is, though other reviewers disagree, definitely dated. Image production and manipulation has developed too far, and become too international, in the last 35 years for "Ways Of Seeing" to even hope to be relevant. It is inherently bigoted, fixated by the English upper classes, and also for example gives some importance to the 'recent' arrival of colour photography as being an important influence on advertising.

Berger seems to particularly enjoy writing chapter 3 (one of the longest chapters), about nude women, which makes very few points about the form and seems like a cheap excuse to reproduce various images of undressed ladies...

A big drawback is that the typography of this book is awful. Considering that its subject matter is that of images, I am staggered that whoever arranged it decided it would be a good idea to put the entire text in BOLD type with expanded line spacing, which leaves limited room for the reproductions of the images, many of which are reproduced far too small and with poor print quality so that you can't make out the details that Berger is actually referring to.

Worth its Weight in Gold!, 31 Mar 2008
This book is filled to the brim with 371, yes 371 individual sources/texts each with an introduction to contextualise each one. Using it for an essay or dissertation will provide you with quotes that you would not be able to find in other books as well as giving you some of the more obvious source which are great too. It is a big book at 1250 pages which was intimating at first when it dropped through the door but really quickly I discovered that its as good as having a whole library in one book which is just about portable.

This is a great book and when you start using it you will realise what a bargain it is too. Worth its weight in gold

BUY IT NOW!, 16 Apr 2006
I reluctantly bought this book believing it would join others on my bookshelf, however it has become my primary source of reference before starting any art essay. How did I manage before? For anyone with an interest in Fine Art this is a must have! I've noticed that it is difficult to obtain this book now -Phew! got my copy just in time. Seek it out and but it now!! This is one you really need!

You need this book., 13 Oct 2005
Absolutely no question.
If you are studying art or intend to then buy this book.
Now.
Don't hesitate.
It has just about all you need.

Essential primer & intro to world of theory..., 25 Jun 2003
Sadly I've only come across this wonderful book (and its earlier companions) recently- a vast collection of key essays and theories relating to culture in the 20th Century. It certainly beats the **** out of a book like Beginning Theory, which is half the price but much, much shorter. A key book that should be owned by all undergraduates starting Uni operating in the wide remit of humanities. The essays/excerpts are short, easy to read & broken down into eight major sections and subsequent sub-sections. Seriously, this book is packed with the kind of thinking and quotations that should litter any university-standard essay- & also gives you a sample of certain writers- which could then be pursued from this wonderful starting point.

The book has sections on: Classicism & Originality; Expression & the Primitive; Modernity; Cubism; Neo-Classicism & the Call to Order; Dissent & Disorder; Abstraction & Form; Utility & Construction; The Modern as Ideal; Realism as Figuration; Realism as Critique; Modernism as Critique; The American Avant-Garde; Individualism in Europe; Art&Society; Art&Modern Life; Modernist Art; Objecthood&Reductivism; Attitudes to Form; Critical Revisions; The Critique of Originality; Figures of Difference;& The Condition of History. Seriously you could easily read the lot in the first year at uni, setting you up greatly for the harder years that follow...Plenty of key cultural thinkers appear here, a brief survey of the contents pages offers Freud, Rilke, Kandinsky, Croce, Lenin, Wyndham Lewis, Braque, Picasso, Spengler, Duchamp, Man Ray, Tatlin, Klee, Jung, Alfred Rosenberg, John Reed, Trotsky, Breton, Bataille, Brecht, Adorno, Pollock, Sartre, Artaud, Lacan, Camus, Bacon, Schlesinger Jr, Lukacs, Barthes, Raymond Williams,Cage, Warhol, Robbe-Grillet, Derrida, Foucault, Mulvey, Jameson, Said, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Wollen, & just about every major theorist of the 20th Century.

This book is excellent value and the ideal primer for anyone studying any subject relating to theory (pretty much most); only quibble would be the relatively fragile cover, which would require a plastic cover or be easily ruined with the amount of reference to this book that would no doubt occur. OWN!

Do not believe the blurbs, 15 Apr 2008
I keep looking at the cover blurbs, looking at the book, looking back...

Pages 1 to 145 (out of 285, not including the afterword) is a summary of anthropological studies of gift giving in different cultures, and of examples of folk tales which have morals about reciprocity (for example the elves and the shoemaker) and sharing. Message: gift exchange has always been massively important in human culture. So far, almost nothing about the creative spirit and transforming the world.

Pages 146 to 162: 'Commerce and the creative spirit'. OK so now we're getting into it, interesting quotes from Pinter, Roethke, Snyder, Ginsberg. This 16 pages seems to be the start of the main theme, but then...

Pages 163 to 218: A biographical sketch of Whitman, focusing 'on how his nursing during the war opened him to love'.
Pqges 218 to 275: An exposition of Ezra Pound's dingbat economic theories and advocacy of facism and anti-semitism.

The relation of these chapters to the rest of the book seems to rest on the fact that both poets were not mainly attentive to the trappings of worldly success (but neither is Warren Buffet!). There is a strong feeling that he has lectured extensively on both these guys and has basically crowbarred them in. But they make up more than a third of the book.

Last ten pages: kind of a restatement of the introduction, but also a moderation: "I still believe the believe a gift can be destroyed by the marketplace. But I no longer feel the poles of this dichotomy to be so strongly opposed". Now he tells us!

The afterword, written in 2006, is a bunch of disparate stuff: open source, open access journals, Lessig-like copyright issues. all showing gift exchange being alive and well (again, nothing to do with artistic gifts - he bounces between the 2 ideas when convenient).

So why are Geoff Dyer and David Foster Wallace (neither of whom are the types of writer I would associate with this kind of poorly constructed mush) willing to act as salesmen for it? How can canongate say that reading about Pound and facism will 'transform the way you look at the world'?

I keep looking at the cover blurbs, looking at the book, looking back...

Early Xmas present to myself, 15 Dec 2007
I bought this for my art school student brother, but ended up keeping it for myself...It reminds us of the place of non-commercial exchange in our culture. It was originally written in the 70s and it shows: today even art is all about money, which robs it of what makes it precious in the first place. This book is unique and therefore difficult to describe - read for yourselves!

A book that will change the way you see the world, 11 Sep 2007
I picked up a copy of The Gift in a bookstore and was initially sceptical because it had these raving endorsements from what seemed like TOO many authors who I think are brilliant. Can a book be this good? Margaret Atwood, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith and Geoff Dyer all certainly seem to think so. And you know what? They were right.

Lewis Hyde is not only a beautiful prose stylist but he is a thinker to match, for The Gift offers a challenging and provocative argument about how we value things. He uses wide-ranging examples from across cultures and epochs and leaves you at the end valuing all the more those things that can't have a monetary worth attached to them.

This is a massive book teeming with wisdom and insights into what matters. It's essential reading. And a beautiful book to give people for many different reasons.

Makes me want to be a bohemian., 14 Apr 2007
Makes me feel like there really is some point to it all. Life enhancing stuff.

One of the best books - ever!, 11 Dec 2006
Originally published in 1979 as The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property and now published in England for the 1st time is a book which in my view is one of the best books - ever! Why, because it speaks directly to you about what makes us tick as human beings, what we do for love and what for money. By studying gift economies in the Pacific which show that gifts link people and commerce separates them and then taking an amazing jump through numerous cultural, spiritual and commercial universes helps give you a coherent view of the world. It then awakens interest in every area of art and human endeavour with wonderful readable prose. This is truly the book to have on your desert island and to give as a gift to everyone you know. Along with Epictetus's "the Art of Living" its all I need.

An ideal approach..., 11 Feb 2005
I used this book as part of a photography module on my degree and found it a very useful and clear cut.

The ideas, advice and conventions in the book will help any photogrophy student as well as many artists on their way to creating well thought out imagery.

Clarkes accessable masterpiece!, 10 May 2000
Graham Clarke has given the kind of theoratical advice which will help any Photography student through the hard times a marvelous read which is easy to follow and explains the codes and conventions in which we are all governed by.. A must for all photographers!

If it's outdated now, it's because it opened a new era, 16 Sep 2008
'Ways of Seeing' is a book which some readers may find a bit puzzling. The ads reproduced in its pages look naive to us, in their unsophisticated emphasis on luxury and glamour, and Berger's commentary on advertising may seem a bit simple, but if so it's because he was one of the first and best critics to compare the effects and uses of advertising and fine art. The main difference between him and most contemporary commentators is that Berger had an independent perspective that they lack; his analysis has far more steel and indignation than the work of someone like Peter York, who comments on ads from the insider's perspective of "Is it effective or not?" Berger refuses to be seduced into talking about ads on their own terms. While the specific tactics used in advertising may be different now from what they were when this book was originally published, the basic strategy is still the same as it will ever be: to sell us not a product but a lifestyle.

Anyone who has travelled in a less-well-off country that has a functioning advertising industry (Greece, for instance) will have noticed that billboard ads there tend to be like early 70s ads in richer countries: they promote a dream of luxury, wealth and sophistication. Ads in the UK and Ireland are aimed at people who already think of themselves as reasonably wealthy and sophisticated, and so UK and Irish ads tend to promote an idea of the consumer as being rootsy, down-to-earth, unpretentious, sensible - all the things that we secretly fear we aren't. The tactic is different, but the strategy (to play on the consumer's hopes and fears about what kind of person they are) is the same.

Berger's work is hardly full of undigested chunks of Marxist doctrine, unlike the far more impenetrable and far less useful work of (e.g.) the Art & Language group. If you come across his work when you're young or ignorant enough, he is one of the most liberating writers around. He teaches you not to agree with him, but how to be critical in the first place; he provokes you into wondering if and how he could be right, which is a gift from a writer to a reader.

This is a relatively entry-level Berger. The early novels are not really very good, except for the first one, "A Painter of our Time". The Booker-winning "G" is a masterpiece, and the more recent fiction has been equally excellent but different in tone and method. The book-length non-fiction, such as "A Fortunate Man", "A Seventh Man", "Another Way of Telling", is all superb. He is one of the best English writers and as he passes 80, his work shows no sign of declining in quality or intensity.

It should be stated that this is only the accompanying book of a TV series which, shamefully, isn't available on DVD. "Ways of Seeing" the programme is still pretty mind-blowing, right from the cheeky opening sequence where Berger appears to cut up an actual Botticelli. The whole show is, or used to be, available in bits on YouTube. I would rather sit through a TV show by Berger than the whole of Kenneth Clark's contemporary and far more expensive "Civilisation", which has been released on DVD.

Thought provoking..., 20 Feb 2008
I recently had to read this as the basis for an essay, but was pleasantly surprised. It is an interesting snippet questioning our view of art and if it has changed throughout history. I found a few of the assumptions a little irritating, such as that Reubens would not have been aware of the device of depicting the human body in an anatomically incorrect pose in order to give the impression of movement. (Particularly as this is something that was well known among artists for hundreds of years and had been used by Leonardo da Vinci for example).

However, if you are looking for a thought provoking, unusual look at how images have been used throughout history, give it a go. Its not a long book and some of the chapters are purely visual to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions.

Essential reading for any kind of visual artist, 10 Feb 2008
This compact, easy to read pictoral/text book is a great aid to understanding the semantics of visual conception. You may think some of it obvious, and some of it a bit cooky, for example its marxist angles on the reasons why we see things the way we have come to, but it does get the student of all things visual thinking hard about it all. Whilst not being a specific aid to any particular field, it is an essential general reader for anyone studying the visual arts, from graphic design to theatre design, and from architecture to photography, and it's why it is still a standard first year college issue on so many courses.

Confounding seeing with perception., 27 Sep 2007
Berger's book is a typical leftist product of the period. He is so desperate to bring class war into the topic that he comes across as faintly absurd. For example - and there are many such - he talks of "..the esoteric approach of a few specialised experts who are the clerks of the nostalgia of a ruling class in decline." when criticising other art critics. I often found myself laughing aloud at such pompous absurdities.

When it comes to his "seeing comes before words" he shows he does not understand the difference between 'seeing' and 'perception' which he muddles turn and turn about. He suggests we drop our assumptions of form, s